How Search Engines and Search Directories Index, Rank Sites

Within the How Search Engines and Search Directories Rank and Index Web sites section below, you'll find articles and tutorials on how search engines index and rank Web sites in general, and how specific search engines rank and index sites, such as Google and Yahoo!

Do you know of some helpful articles or tutorials on how search engines index or rank Web sites? Do you know of some helpful, insightful articles, tutorials, books, or resources related to search, SEO, or SEM? Recommendations are welcome and encouraged!

How Search Engines WorkGood overview of how search engines list and rank a Web site. Links to more articles, info. Helpful info via the public Web site area and much more thorough, detailed info via the paid subscriber area. [Article/tutorial dated 10/14/2002, by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch.]

How Search Engines Work: Search Engine Relevancy Reviewed Comprehensive articles covers Yahoo! Search, MSN Search, Google, Ask, Vertical Search & Other Search Companies. Starts with a summary for each, then provides indepth explanations. “A comprehensive review of search engine relevancy algorithms, published by Aaron Wall on June 13, 2006. While some of the general details have changed, the major themes referenced in this article were still relevant when I reviewed it a year after publishing it.” [Article/tutorial dated 06/13/2006, by Aaron Wall, SEO Book[*note].]

SEO For The New Google Insight about how the latest changes with Google could impact your site's rankings, such as the history of your Web pages, the way backlinks are counted, site content and structure. [Article/tutorial dated 12/09/2005 by Dave Davies, for evolt.org.]

How Microsoft MSN Search Engine Indexes, Ranks Web Sites

Microsoft Attacks Click Spam by Looking at Noisy BehaviorAs stated in this article, “sites in search results that rank highly while serving visitors only ads are the target of a number of papers by Microsoft, submitted to the SIGIR 2006 conference.” This post includes links to articles and research findings about Microsoft search and how they're changing how they list and rank Web sites. [Article/tutorial dated 08/14/2006, by Bill Slawski, SEW (Search Engine Watch) Blog.]

Disclosure Regarding Affiliate Programs

[*note] Links thus marked are to sites for which WebsiteTips.com has signed up for an affiliate program - such as Trellian's Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, and Aaron Wall's SEO Book.

Since WebsiteTips.com already had links to their sites anywayand because they have strong reputations for being good, worthwhile products, WebsiteTips.com's owner, editor went ahead and signed up for their affiliate programs late summer of 2007.

WebsiteTips.com had links to these sites prior to signing up for these affiliate programs.

WebsiteTips.com and its owner don't get paid anything for:

including any of the affiliate program links at WebsiteTips.com.

listing these sites at WebsiteTips.com.

anyone clicking on the affiliate program links.

WebsiteTips.com and its owner do get an affiliate payment if and only if someone signs up for the affiliate product within a short time period after visiting those sites from the links on this page.

WebsiteTips.com continues to add ONLY quality resources, regardless of the above affiliate programs that comprise only a handful of links out of our 2,500+ resources.

Like any other helpful resources, Websitetips.com continues to add new annotated resources discovered that we feel would be helpful to visitors, whether or not they are related to our very short list of affiliate programs.

Affiliate text links anywhere at WebsiteTips.com that aren't otherwise clearly noted as an ad or a sponsor are duly noted with the above [*note] link.